Photo by Eric J. Hansen.

No apologies, friends! But as far as deer hunting in California goes, I’m not exactly what anybody would call a devoted trophy hunter. There was a lot of water under the bridge before I killed my first buck. And it was a fat forkhorn mule deer that I thought was the greatest deer ever to walk a Mono County migration trail.

Of course, that was the mid-1950s -- a time when the emphasis was on getting a supply of venison. Back then, almost no one spoke of bucks in terms of their trophy value. I daresay that inside many an old barn, near-record-book antlers are still piled up where hunters chucked them after cutting up their deer meat.

Indeed, things have changed! Today, thanks to the interest in keeping records, much more attention is paid to antler development on bucks virtually everywhere. There were far more deer in this state in the “good” old days of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. Yet the biggest percentage of bucks killed were younger animals with forkhorns or three-point antlers.

ONE IN FIVE WAS 4-POINTS-PLUS
Actually, that’s still the case today.

In 2007, more than 50 percent of all the bucks taken statewide were forkhorns. Three-point bucks came in at roughly 30 percent. But that means hunters connected with 4-pointers about 15 percent of the time. And about 5 percent knocked down bucks with more than 4 points.

RECORD-BOOK PURSUITS
Bigger-than-average deer are killed in virtually every one of the state’s 44 general-season deer zones, but not very many of them. And even the best bucks have only a slim chance of being added to the pages of the Boone and Crockett Club’s Records of North American Big Game, or Pope and Young’s Bowhunting Big Game Records of North America.

That’s due in part to the makeup of deer herds in California. No other state has six subspecies of mule deer, as we do here. Because the dividing lines between them are blurred, Boone and Crockett lumps together five of the subspecies in the mule deer categories of typical and non-typical. The lone exception is Columbian blacktail deer, which are listed separately. To qualify for that designation, blacktails must come from a specific geographic area where crossbreeding does not occur.

What does it take to get a buck into the mule deer listings in B&C’s all-time records? To give you some idea, California hunters are represented by only one buck in the typical category and five in the non-typical category.

However, scads of blacktails are listed, including a great buck taken by my son-in-law, Robert Feamster, and another that will have my son Mark’s name next to it in the next edition of the all-time records book.

X-ZONE DOMINANCE
Percentage wise, hunters are most likely to encounter wallhanger bucks in the 17 X Zones, where the biggest mule deer are found. All of the premium X Zone tags are awarded in June. In 2007, tags for individual X Zones ranged from a high of 2,230 in Zone X1 to only 55 in Zone X5a.

Last year, the total number of tags available for all the X Zones combined was 8,020.

So-called additional hunts are another good option. But drawing a tag for the best of them is usually much easier said than done. These hunts include general-methods hunts, area-specific archery hunts, muzzleloader rifle hunts and junior hunts.

A few of these hunts regularly produce monster bucks and high hunter success. However, tag allotments are quite low.

Now that you have a better picture of what goes on during California’s deer seasons, a review of the situation here is in order.